Aristocracy in Greek Society

Abstract

This book is a study of Greek political thinking and behaviour from Homer to the fourth century (in the case of Sparta, to the death of Nabis), which seeks to establish a basic division between 'aristocratic' and 'popular' governments (the latter including tyrannies as well as democracies), and to controvert the view that Greek history should be seen as a gradual progress towards democracy, interrupted by occasional and lamentable lapses. After a brief introduction Arnheim offers us chapters on the Homeric world ('kings and heroes'), the aristocracies of archaic Greece, Sparta ('the republic of demigods'), the archaic tyrannies, Athens ('aristocrats against aristocracy'), the persistence of 'the aristocratic ethos', and a conclusion; there are eighteen pages of notes, and seven of bibliography. The aristocratic nature of the Homeric world is brought out, in which words like d'ya6cq are applied to the nobles and to the behaviour expected of the nobles, and 'the big divide ... is ... between nobles and commoners, rather than between kings and nobles'. Transition from this world, in which already the kings are weak and the other nobles are strong, to the aristocratic city-states with which Greece emerged from the Dark Age should not have been difficult; and aristocracies of first settlers in colonies or of conquering invaders on the Greek mainland present no problem. In Sparta the Lycurgan reform was an attack on the aristocracy (better: a concession which had to be made to an attack on the aristocracy), and Arnheim stresses that the attack was not wholly successful: the 'equals' formed a new aristocracy vis-a-vis the other inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia, but the evidence for continuing and growing inequality among the 'equals' is given due weight. 'But not all Greek states were fortunate enough to have a helot problem' to force the aristocrats and their attackers to make common cause: in many cities power was usurped by a tyrant, seen by Arnheim as typically a disaffected aristocrat who championed not so much the nouveaux riches as the embittered poor against the aristocracy. In Athens aristocratic rule was attacked and democracy ultimately brought into being by a series of aristocratic 7rpooarrat rov 6 /,ov-Solon, Pisistratus, Cleisthenes, Pericles-and Arnheim stresses the similarities between a Pisistratus and a Pericles, and the mutual dependence of the StijioC and its 7rpoorT7rq. Even when the Athenian constitution was democratic, and even when men like Cleon had risen to prominence, aristocratic attitudes persisted: Pericles' funeral oration proclaimed equality of opportunity rather than absolute equality; the peasant to whom Euripides married Electra was an impoverished aristocrat, and never 'shamed her bed'; and in the fourth century both Plato and Aristotle argued in favour of inequality. 'From Homer to Alexander and beyond birth was the principal criterion of worth among the Greeks. In more senses than one, this attitude to politics ran in their blood.' Arnheim writes confidently and provocatively, and the result is a stimulating book for students of Greek history or politics. But students should not rely on him as their sole guide. The views of other scholars are cheerfully denounced, but some of Arnheim's own views are unorthodox and, I fear, unlikely to be right: that 'Homeric society is essentially Mycenaean society' (pp. 23-38); that the 'Draconian constitution' in Ath. Pol. 4 may be authentic (pp. 47-8); that Spartan institutions were derived from Crete (pp. 87-8). On matters of detail